RIM’s Alec Saunders caused a fair amount of controversy with recent postings to his Twitter account. Apart from calling the Google Play market a “cesspool” and wagging his finger at rampant app piracy, he also told the world that RIM was going to drop app sideloading for end users.
Realistically, the change probably wouldn’t have impacted developers — and Saunders did say that the company had devised a backup plan with them in mind. A few days and several hundred angry comments from BlackBerry enthusiasts who seemed to think Saunders had signed the death warrant for sideloading, he’s now taken to the BlackBerry developer blog to clear the air.
This time around, Saunders clearly states that sideloading on the BlackBerry platform has always been intended as a developer-only feature. Interestingly, though, he also says that sideloading allows devs to provide their testing community with beta releases of their apps for testing purposes.
Doesn’t that leave the door open for piracy? Possibly, but RIM has other plans, too.
One strong possibility is the introduction of encrypted apps, which would lock individual installs to a particular BlackBerry PIN. That may mean that we’ll see invite-only pre-release apps that can be installed via App World — assuming they’re really intent on making sure that sideloading remains a developer-only tool.
It’s actually a bit surprising that RIM — who have historically been so focused on providing the most secure mobile platform possible — haven’t been encrypting apps all along. The push for a more vibrant ecosystem has never been stronger, however, with PlayBook OS 2.0 recently released and the first BlackBerry 10 devices just around the corner.
